Thursday, October 31, 2013

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in late 2009 Your Mama discussed with the children Grammy-winning Kings of Leon bassist Jared Followill's $1,825,000 purchase of a modern-minded and newly constructed bachelor pad mansion in the leafy and prosperous Green Hills area of Nashville, TN.

Fast forward to last fall (2012) and the 25-year old platinum selling rock star hitched his love wagon to a slightly younger brown haired gal named Martha Patterson and, as rich and/or famous folk often do in the wake of marriage, divorce and/or a new baby, the newly-wedded couple hoisted Mister Followill's former bachelor pad on the market with an asking price of $3,500,000.*

Current listing details show the vaguely chalet-like and slightly cathedral-esque, three-story residence, completed in 2009, sits on just over an acre of hillside land with five bedrooms and five full and two half bathrooms in 8,050 square feet of fairly airy interior space.** The ceilings throughout much of the mansion appear to be nicely high and the wood floors in much of the house are graphically striated, wide plank, high-gloss, and Goddamn gorgeous. Large expanses and, in some cases, entire walls of windows suck up postcard worthy tree top, rolling mountain, and big sky views.

A compact entry opens into a spacious (and sparely furnished) combination formal living/dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows and a raised firebox with chatoyant stainless still surround. Say what y'all may but, even though we find the over-sized square mirror in the dining area appallingly pedestrian and the multi-candle centerpiece on the table wholly unnecessary, Your Mama thinks the George Nelson bubble light fixture and the Gaudi-ish dining room table and chairs are a exceptionally taut and rather inspired pair since—if you look closely—they speak the same language, as do the trio of sinuous electric guitars hung on the wall as art. Anyhoodles...

The sizable center island kitchen, outfitted with top-quality finishes and equipped with high-grade appliances, adjoins a family room where a group of caramel-colored tufted leather seating is arranged for optimal viewing of the flat-screen television that's mounted over another raised fireplace with another one of those chatoyant (and ever-so-contemporary) stainless steel surrounds.

The formal living/dining room and the family room both have long banks of glass doors that slide open to a kind of indoor porch with grey tile floors, high ceilings, and an entire wall of wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling windows. French doors on either side of a stone fireplace—one not surprisingly surmounted by a flat-screen boob-toob—open to a small, trellised terrace with a big view.

We're not sure where each of the five bedrooms are located but it seems clear from listing photos that in addition to whatever bedrooms may (or may not) be up there, the mansion's uppermost floor offers a central common space where Mister Followill has a cache of musical instruments, including a complete and probably loud drum set. A few steps up from the music room, a crow's nest lounge has more of those verdant, wrap round views of the green hills of Green Hills.

The finished area of lowest living level includes a number of recreation and amusement spaces such as a concrete-floored fitness room, a home theater with built-in wet bar/candy counter, and a temperature controlled walk-in wine cellar and tasting room minimally furnished with nothing more than a rustic farmhouse table and eight, Eames-designed Eiffel Tower-base molded plastic chairs.

A matching set of exterior stairs leads down from the slender terrace that runs along the back of the lowest level to a negative-edge swimming pool that fairly well mimics the residence's complicated roof-line. To one side of the pool there's a shaded outdoor kitchen/barbecue situation with four-stool snack counter and in the middle of the pool there's a raised circular spa. That means, of course, that every time Pacolito the house boy brings a fresh round of gin & tonics to spa-sitters he has to wade inconveniently ankle deep into the pool.

We confess that we (currently) have no inside intel about where Mister and Missus Followill plan to move but iffen we had to guess—and we don't have to guess, of course—we'd predict they're headed towards and similarly large and (arguably) more family friendly mansion in one of Nashville's more exclusive and expensive zip codes.*Actually Mister (and Missus) Followill listed the Green Hills property back in April (2013) at the same $3.5 million price but it's now, after several prompts by a couple of in-the-know Nashvillians, that Your Mama is getting around to it. Don't hate. Sometimes, children, it just goes down like that. Anyways...**Listing details from the time of Mister Followill's purchase put the house at 7,441 square feet. Make of the discrepancy what you will.listing photos: Showcase Photographers for Fridrich & Clark

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Nick Nameless, a helpful little birdie down in the star-studded city of Nashville, was kind enough to let Your Mama know that top-selling singer/songwriter Gary LeVox of the pop-country trio Rascal Flatts two-stepped his Nashville-area mansion on the market with an asking price of $3,350,000.

Iffin Your Mama is being honest—and we always are—we'd come right out and spill it that despite having sold than 21 million albums, toured to sold out audience, and taken home more than 40 industry awards Your Mama wouldn't know a Rascal Flatts ditty if it came up and chawed off our ham hock. However, it didn't take much scroungin' 'round the interweb to figure out that Rascal Flatts' several dozen industry awards include (but are not limited to) six ACMS, five AMAs, six CMTS, seven CMAs, five People's Choice awards, one Grammy, and a star on the famed Hollywood Walk of Fame. Anyways...

Property records we peeped indicate Mister LeVox picked up the sylvan and rolling 2.62 acre property in March 2005 for $295,000 and it is he who is responsible for for the (almost garishly) opulent mansion that current digital marketing materials describe as a "grand Romanesque Villa designed by [Nashville-based architect] Mitchell Barnett."

Lantern-topped pillars and electronically operated iron gates mark the entrance to the multi-acre property that's located in a small, gated enclave of similarly sized mansions. The medium-length driveway slips over a gentle rise before it arrives at a rather grand(iose), double-wide circular drive that hugs a central fountain. A long flight of stone-balustraded steps climb (and climb and climb) up to a soaring, double-height portico with, when turned around facing away from the house, bucolic over-the tree-top views of forested mountains. Current listing details show the 18-room villa has a total of 12,802 square feet on two floors, plus a finished basement. There are five bedrooms, six full and two half bathrooms, at least four fireplaces, and, at either end of the house two two-car attached garages with direct entry.

We're not sure but the lack of personal effects suggests to Your Mama that Mister LeVox and family either prefer a type of day-core that looks and feels like a hotel or they've already vacated their unapologetically decadent suburban Nashville abode that sports an almost exclusively and rigorously adhered to brown, beige, cream and white color palette. The center hall entry has mottled mink and ecru colored inlaid marble floors, a double-height ceiling, and dual staircases that curve and float and were clearly designed with prom photos and over-the-top Christmastime day-core in mind.

A double-columned gallery at the back of the foyer leads to a spacious, step-down formal living room dressed with with a hulking carved stone (or, possibly, poured concrete) mantelpiece, a deep coffered ceiling, and painstakingly swagged and lightly pasamenteried drapery in an almost identical taupe shade to as taupe-colored deep pile wall-to-wall carpeting. The formal dining room has a fabric-paneled wall treatment that probably helps to deafen the clankety-clank of silverware during holiday dinners and both the formal dining room and the office/study that flank the foyer have mottled mink and ecru marble floors, French doors, and a fabric-tented ceiling. Personally, we don't care for or even understand a pleated and fabric-tented ceiling treatment but maybe we're funny that way.

The kitchen, fitted with raised panel cabinetry and chunky carved corbels, can be accessed from the dining room through a sink- and wine fridge-equipped butler's pantry or, less elegantly, directly from the formal living room through doorways on either side of the fireplace. The bullet-shaped kitchen has an a oval-shaped center island, marble tile floors laid on the bias, and dark granite (or some sort of stone) counter tops that seems to be a perfect match to the fireplace surround. The adjoining breakfast room has lots of windows but, as far as Your Mama can tell, no direct access up to the outdoor entertainment areas that run along the back of the house. The service area behind the kitchen includes a small home office with built-in desk and cabinets, a roomy laundry room, a powder room, and back stairs that link to both the upper level bedrooms and the finished basement.

A double-doored main floor master suite has all-but-windowless bedroom with raised corner fireplace as well as a separate sitting room and a wet-bar/morning kitchen. The a custom-fitted walk-in closet and dressing room is as big as a bedroom and a private bathroom offers a two-sink vanity, a marble-lined stall shower, and a soaking tube set awkwardly into a windowed niche (not-surprisingly) dressed with a bespangled balloon shade.

The five upper level bedrooms include a second, chandelier-lit master suite with domed ceiling, a quilted fabric wall treatment, and more swagged and pasamenteried drapery. There's also a corner fireplace, a two-room bathroom suite with super-sized circular bathtub, a compartmentalized and fitted walk-in closet plus an even bigger cedar-lined closet-room, and a private loggia with ceiling fan and fire pit.

There are at least two family room spaces on the upper level and down in the basement there's a game room with full kitchen as well as a home theater with rust-colored, extra- wide wale corduroy upholstered recliners. An extensive cache of listing photos Your Mama perused also show a long, skinny and kinda claustrophobic looking fitness room and several more less-than-optimally-shaped rooms of unknown and/or flexible utility.

For a 2.5+ acre property the usable area of the backyard is surprisingly compact. A curtained loggia with built-in barbecue station overlooks a small-ish, half-moon swimming pool that's set into a hedge-topped curved retaining wall. A think strip of terrace between the house and the swimming pool leads around the side of the house where a sunken trampoline is wedged into a corner of the house. Beyond that there's a flat bit lawn and a playhouse done up in the same "Romanesque Villa" style as the main house.

We're not sure of the LeVox family's future real estate plans but we do know that their old house, the one that's currently for sale, is located in the same small gated enclave south of Nashville where Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban once owned a home and where country superstar Kix Brooks owns a three-story contemporary on XX acres that backs up to an even larger spread with a modern mansion custom-built (and owned) by oft-reported to be divorcing but still touring together NashVegas royals Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.

...from trusted tipster Babbling Babette that supermodel turned Emmy-winning reality t.v. power player and budding apparel tycoon Heidi Klum is fixin' to hoist her mock-Med mansion in L.A.'s Brentwood area on the market with a price tag somewhere around $24,250,000.

The German-born Miz Klum and her estranged hubby, four-time Grammy-winning musician Seal, purchased the estate out of foreclosure in late 2010. They paid, as per property records, $14.2 million so if Miz Klum gets anywhere near their (rumored) asking price she'll have earned a substantial profit, less carrying costs, upkeep and improvement expenses, and real estate fees.

We're not sure what, if any, improvement and/or alterations Miz Klum made to the roomy residence or property but at the time of their acquisition the spacious mock-Med mansion had 8 bedrooms and 9.5 bathrooms in, as per listing details from the time, about 12,300 square feet of decadent interior space that included a wine cellar with tasting room, a cigar room with separate filtration system, a colossal kitchen with an early 17th-century Scottish mantelpiece, a domed library with a fireplace said to have been extracted from Napoleon's farmhouse, and a dining room that was originally installed in the Pierre Hotel in Paris and was dismantled and re-mantled in Brentwood.

The property spreads across 8.52 acres—or just over 12 acres, depending on where one looks on the internets—in the guard-gated Brentwood County Estates community where some of the other residents include (in)famously philandering former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and real estate size queens Tom Brady and Giselle Bündchen who recently had their custom-designed and—ahem—eco-conscious 22,000 square foot mega-mansion featured in Architectural Digest.

The children will recall that it was Your Mama who first let the celebrity real estate cat out of the bag a couple weeks ago about Miz Klum (and her new bodyguard-boyfriend) dropping close to ten million clams on a brick-built neo-Georgian-style pile in a little-known gated enclave high in the mountains above hoity-toity Bel Air.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: By his own tally, Grammy-winning humorist and author David Sedaris is a bit of a real estate baller with an international property portfolio.The best-selling author, side-splitting story-teller, prolific memoirist, and engaging monologist and his long-time man-mate, painter and set designer Hugh Hamrick, don't maintain a vast stable of over-sized mansions and high-maintenance estates like most of the real estate ballers Your Mama discusses around here but they do, none-the-less, own at least eight relatively modest residences in (at least) three countries.

In addition to their current residence, a 16th-century farmhouse in the rural South Downs area of West Sussex in the south of England, the couple also own: their former home, a rustic cottage in an almost non-existent village in France's Normandy region; an apartment and a house in London; not one but three apartments in Paris;* a house in North Carolina, where Mister Sedaris says his sister lives; and, their most recent acquisition, we learned from Mister Sedaris's latest installment in The New Yorker, an ocean front duplex in Emerald Isle, NC that he and his mister picked up last summer (2013) for—as per property records—for $825,000.

The purchase of a beach house in Emerald Isle, NC, might seem a tetch odd for someone who has, for quite some time, happily lived abroad. But it makes much more sense if you know that Mister Sedaris grew up in Raleigh, NC, spent childhood summers with his parents and five siblings on Emerald Isle, and used to tell himself that he would one day "buy a beach house and that it would be every one's as long as they followed my Draconian rules and never stopped thanking me for it."

Listing details (and other information) Your Mama dug up indicate the unassuming—if downright unattractive, two-story duplex was built in 1978 on a high dune with unobstructed ocean views up and down the shoreline of the slender barrier island. All together, as per digital marketing materials, there are six bedrooms and four bathrooms in 2,640 square feet but, given the exterior symmetry, Your Mama thinks it's probably safe to assume that each of the units has three bedrooms and two bathrooms in 1,320 square feet. One rental listing we turned up online indicates there's a (probably and hopefully double-locked) doorway that connects the two units that each rented for the 2013 season at rates that started at about $1,200 per week.

Our opinion, as informed by rental listing photographs Your Mama dug up on the internets, is that at the time of Misters Sedaris and Hamricks' purchase each of the units was inexpensively (and depressingly) decorated with a mis-matched hodge-podge of cast-offs and other furnishings that look like they were selected not for personal attachment or aesthetic satisfaction but rather for their low cost, long-range durability, and stain resistance.**

As per digital marketing materials, both of the units have upgraded kitchens, a description that translates for at least one of the units to egg-shell toned linoleum flooring, new and average-quality stainless steel appliances, and white cabinetry topped by cornflower blue laminate counter tops. A one- (or maybe two-) stool breakfast bar separates the kitchen(s) from the carpeted combination living/dining room(s). Large windows are filled with beach and ocean views and a door in the dining area connects to a shared, lower deck that runs the full-width of the duplex. The lower deck, shared by both units and shaded by the deck above it, has a handful of rocking chairs and not-rocking chairs, a couple of picnic benches, which we love because we love a beach-side picnic bench, and, somewhere, an outdoor shower area.

A brief and unscientific study of the window placement on the rear façade suggests to Your Mama that four of the duplex's six bedrooms face the ocean and that at least two of them have direct access to a shared, upper-level deck with a sensational and sea gull-ish view. However, butter beans, based on the various rental listing photographs Your Mama perused, we'd bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that all six of the almost comically bare-bones bedrooms were done up by the sellers with little more than decoratively questionable bed linens and window treatments.

A catwalk extends off the back of the lower deck and descends to another deck with built-in benches that's set half-way down the dune. Although this slightly elevated location would undoubtedly make a sweet spot to view a summer sunrise Your Mama imagines this deck fills up with with a kaleidoscopic tangle of beach chairs and umbrellas, booze coolers, boogie boards and other necessary beach equipment that turns it into more of an ankle-breaking hazard than a serene early a.m. spot to reflect on whatever it is one reflects upon when they staring contemplatively at the ocean.*Private note to Mister Sedaris: You mentioned in this interview that you and Hugh sometimes just hand out the keys to one of your Paris apartments to friends, acquaintances, and virtual strangers. Well, hunney, if you ever feel like tossing them keys Your Mama's way, please do. We just j'adore Paris in the winter and promise not to leave any cut-rate cereal in the kitchen cupboard. Think about it. Seriously, think about it. Anyways...**These are, to be sure, excellent qualities in furnishings for investment-oriented real estate that is regularly rented out to seaside vacationers who may or may not treat the furnishings in a considerate or even respectable manner. But, believe it children, low-cost, durable and stain resistance does not have to be this ugly. It really doesn't. (rental) listing photos: Emerald Isle Realty, FlipKey

Monday, October 28, 2013

He may be in the sunset of an almost freakishly stellar career on the tennis court—yesterday he lost in the finals of the Basel indoor tournament in his home country of Switzerland to Argentine Juan Martín del Potro—but tennis titan Roger Federer still rakes in vast sums of money, some of which he spends on high-priced real estate.*

In addition to a villa in South Africa and a luxury apartment in Dubai the low-key but luxe-living 17-time Grand Slam winner reportedly maintains a number of properties in Switzerland including (but perhaps not limited to) a terrace apartment in the wee lake-side municipality of Wollerau and a pair of newly constructed and very contemporary side-by-side chalets in the Swiss Alps town of Valbella—one for him and his family and the other for his parents—that are reportedly linked by an underground passage.

Mister Federer's most recent addition to his impressive real estate portfolio came in late 2011 when he and his missus, Mirka, spend somewhere around 29,000,000 Swiss Francs for a vacant 5,800 square meter parcel high on a steep and scenic slope above Lake Zurich in the Laubhölzli area of the historic and wealthy lake-side community of Herrliberg. Your Mama's currency and land conversion contraption shows those figures equal just about 32.4 million U.S. dollars (at today's rates) and a bit more than 1.4 acres.

Of course, Your Mama really have no idea if or what exactly Mister and Missus Federer plan to build on the prime piece of property in Herrliberg but a little birdie—let's call him Caleb Clockmaker—recently pointed Your Mama's nosy nose to the website of a fancy Swiss architecture firm that appears to have been commissioned to design a glassy, spacious and modern-minded three-story residence for the Federer family.

No details of the sleek abode are included on the architecture firm's digital portal but renderings indicate there will be a carport/motor court beneath a giant circular cut out through which a trio of trees grow, lots of glass-railed terraces with sweeping views over Lake Zurich, a smaller secondary building—presumably for guests or staff, an outdoor swimming pool that will most certainly cost a fortune to heat in the winter, and, even though it's just a short walk from the TC Herrliberg tennis club, a private tennis court.

*The Forbes folks estimated Mister Federer's income for the twelve month period between June 2012 and June 2013 to be about $71,500,000, the vast majority of which was derived from appearance fees, exhibition matches, and fat endorsement contracts with brands such as Rolex, Mercedes Benz, Nike, and Credit Suisse.renderings: Arndt Geiger Herrmann

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Oddly enough, Your Mama first heard it over the weekend from an anonymous tipster that 50-something year old Cuban-born crossover pop star Gloria Estefan put the guest house of a waterfront compound she owns on Miami Beach's swanky Star Island enclave up for lease at $30,000 per month but it seems the ever-assiduous folk at celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ got to it first. These things happen. Anyways...

Property records Your Mama peeped indicate the property last changed hands in late 1993 for $1,840,000. The current owner, a mysteriously named corporate entity can be linked to seven-time Grammy winner Miz Estefan, her 19-time Grammy winning music producer husband, Emilio, and Frank Amadeo, the president of the Miami Beach-based Estefan Enterprises.

Current digital marketing materials (and property records) show the gated guest house sits on a 1.339 acre waterfront parcel and has three bedrooms and 3 bathrooms in about 4,500 square feet. Listing details go on to indicate the "tastefully decorated Floridian villa" includes an eat-in kitchen, a second floor loft, and plenty of closet space as well as a private entrance (from the main house) and a spa encircled by a foliage enshrouded trellis structure.

Your Mama found evidence online that the entire estate—the guest house and the 5 bedroom main house—were recently available as a furnished lease at $75,000 per month and, as recently as late May (2013), the property was available for lease at $7,500 per night with a three night minimum.

This property is not, children, where Mister and Missus Estefan actually live. Their larger and more Mediterranean-style compound-like residence is located half a dozen mansions away. Pill-shaped and guard-gated Star Island has long attracted celebrities and other high profile people. Cuban-born money man Paul Cejas—a former ambassador to Belgium—owns one of the smaller Star Island estates and, at more than 6 manicured acres, the largest is owned by pharmaceutical tycoon Phillip Frost.

Russian vodka mogul Roustam Tariko spent more than $25 million for his 9 bedroom and 11 bathroom Star Island mansion in 2011 and in 2009 Shaquille O'Neal's former mansion was purchased for $16 million by (hunky) Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin who's reportedly spent more than twenty million bucks remodeling and reworking the entire property. (He's the former man-friend of Naomi Campbell who—ouch!—now dates a much younger Chinese model who Miz Campbell mentored on her model-search show The Face.)

Puff Father or Fiddle Diddle or whatever name Sean Combs goes by nowadays still owns the Star Island spread he picked up back in 1999 while Rosie O'Donnell recently unloaded her estate for $16.5 million to real estate investors David and Linda Frankel. (She's Diane Sawyer's sister).

The so-called housewives of The Real Housewives... reality franchise have a long history with Star Island as well. The gals from Atlanta once spent a melodramatic weekend at the estate of idiosyncratic German-born real estate developer Thomas Kramer and two of the high-maintenance ladies from the Miami version of the show now own homes on Star Island. In May 2011, Gala-throwing Lea Black and her attorney hubby, Roy, paid $7,107,000 for their estate that once belonged to Tommy Mottola and, in October 2012, cosmetic surgeon Lenny Hochstein and his artificially enhanced wife, Lisa, bought their all but decrepitStar Island mansion and have ever since been locked in a fevered and bitter battle with preservationists who are adamantly opposed to the Hochstein's plan to knock down and replace the existing mansion with a brand new and exceptionally lavish mansion.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld opened the doors to the—ahem—"laid back" mansion-cottage that anchors their 10+ acre ocean-front estate in high-fallutin' East Hampton (NY) to the folk at InStyle magazine. That would be the one with the with a private baseball field and 22-car garage. (InStyle via Curbed)

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In case y'all didn't already know, American professional pigskinner Tom Brady and Brazilian supermodel Giselle Bündchen are extraordinarily rich real estate size queens. Not only do they own a hulking 22,000 square foot—ahem—eco-conscious mansion in Los Angeles and have plans to erect a similarly sized chateau on a large, leafy lot in the waspy Chestnut Hill area of Brookline, MA. The latest scuttlebutt out of Manhattan via Page Six of the New York Post is that the property-mad pair are in contract to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $14 million for a 47th floor condo at the sleek, very glassy, and painfully slender One Madison Park building in the fully gentrified and trendified Flatiron District. (New York Post)

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We don't think it sound the least bit odd to anyone who knows a thing about residential features favored by the rich and famous but building plans for former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's new holiday hideaway in Holladay, UT call for a secret room to be installed behind a swiveling bookcase. The narrow space is marked innocuously as "office storage" on architectural plans but New York Magazine speculates the 5' by 11' room could be used to store Mister Romney's shy tax files. But, really, what does Your Mama or anyone else really know? It could also be the Romney's will outfit the room as a panic room, a walk-in safe, a wine cellar or, perhaps, a therapeutic deprivation tank. Who knows? Anyone care?

P.S. The secret room, by the way, is not located in the 9,000 square foot log-built chalet Mister and Missus Romney just bought for $8.9 million in the upscale (ski) resort town of Park City, UT. The no-longer-secret room is planned for a different house the couple his having custom built, as we mentioned, in Holladay, a southeaster suburb of Salt Lake City about 30 miles from Park City. (The Salt Lake Tribune via New York Magazine)

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Didjy'all hear Madonna finally sold her Sunset Boulevard mansion to a Wall Street big wig for $19.5 million? Yeah, we did too. Well, actually...first Your Mama heard it was sold to a low profile but stinking rich local family then we heard it was to the same hedge fund fella that used to own Tyler Perry's old house in the Bird Streets but, honestly, we're just not sure. (Los Angeles Times and TMZ)

Amid much hullabaloo and whatnot by property gossips, a luxe-livin' lady named Galina Anisimova has pushed her walled and guard-gated bay front compound in Brooklyn's solidly upper middle class (and increasing affluent) Mill Basin neighborhood on the open market with a stupendous $30,000,000 price tag.

Miz Anisimova is the wife (and ex-wife and wife again) of semi-reclusive Russian multi-billionaire Vasily Asimov—his money is largely from aluminum and other mined metals—and the mother of Anna Anisimova, the pampered young woman who last year put her 4,000 square foot 75th floor apartment at the Time Warner Center on the open market with a $50 million price tag.

Anways, Momma Anisimova's almost psychotically contemporary compound in Mill Basin—once an Italian residential stronghold and now inhabited by a whole lot of Russians—has two mansions, one three stored the other four, that together encompass 23,000 square feet with a combined total of 10 bedrooms and 11 full and 4 half bathrooms* plus four kitchens, several wet bars, and two elevators. We counted underground garage parking for seven cars plus above ground garage parking for three more, and that's not counting the twenty or so cars that can park securely in the massive motor court in front of the main house.

Floor plans included with digital marketing materials are worth a look-see and show a 125-foot long boomerang-shaped open-concept main living area, a 1,000 square foot water-side swimming pool ringed by thick foliage and a cantilevered promenade, roof decks atop both residences, and a private marina capable of hosting seven boats. A top-floor meditation lounge with a pyramidal skylight and a wall of curved glass gives way to a nearly 1,600 square foot wrap-around terrace with sweeping bay, marsh, and Belt Parkway views. (Curbed)*In case any of y'all might be curious, those figures break down—by Your Mama's count—to four bedrooms and seven full and two half bathrooms plus a staff bedroom and bathroom in the main house and three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms plus an attached but separate 2-3 bedroom staff suite with 1.5 bathrooms in the detached guest house.

Before the Canadian-American Mister Jackson shot to tween- and teen-aged super stardom in the late 1990s as the love-starved Pacey Witter on the hit show Dawson's Creek he appeared as a child in the—ahem—less-than-stellar sports comedy franchise Mighty Ducks. A couple of handfuls of forgettable movies followed his time on The Creek (Battle in Seattle, Aurora Borealis, Bobby, Shutter) but for the last five years the six-foot-two and usually scruffy-faced Mister Jackson has starred on the boob-toob's critically well-received sci-fi mystery/drama Fringe.

She wanted to be a ballerina but an injury in her late teens spun German-born Miz Kruger off into the glammy, globe-trotting world of high fashion modeling. She worked the catwalks, posed for the adverts of venerable houses such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Chanel, and several times landed on the cover of a number of widely read magazines (Vogue Paris, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan). Miz Kruger's acting career began with a bevy of small parts in French films—she was living in Paris, after all, and an unremarkable appearance in the Brad Pitt action-flick vehicle Troy (2004). She later received accolades for her roles in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and the sci-fi fantasy drama Mr. Nobody, both in 2009. Miz Kruger doesn't pull down a lot of plum roles in Hollywood she's still a popular gal who's regularly tapped to play some sort of role in all sorts of industry events. She announced the Golden Globe nominations in 2009, she hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 2007, and last year (2012) she was selected as a jury member at the same festival.

Property records show Mister Jackson and Miz Kruger, through a pair of perplexingly named trusts, acquired their walled and gated hillside digs in the heart of the historic Hollywood Dell 'hood for $1,315,000 in June 2009. Current online marketing materials show the two-story house, a fully updated and upgraded cottage from the 1920s, has three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 2,389 square feet of casually sophisticated interior space with lovely in not exactly thrilling tree-top views.

Discreet yet alluring high-gloss black lacquer gates mark the side-saddle entrance to the residence down a raised, tiled, and foliage protected concourse. The front door opens directly into a "formal" living room with a coved ceiling, a mottled brick fireplace surround, and dark wood floors set off by crisp white walls and a white animal hide rug. Three identical clear glass orbs make for a contemporary (and mass-market catalog-style) stand in for a more traditional chandelier in the window-lined formal dining room.

The adjacent family/media room has more dark wood floors and coved ceilings, a pleasing row of square windows with tree-top and sky views, and direct access to a long deck that runs along the entirety of back of the house and widens up at one end to accommodate a dining area. The center island kitchen mixes vintage details such as honeycomb tile floors and a porcelain farmhouse sink with luxury fittings and features like black marble counter tops and high-quality appliances that include a glass-fronted commercial fridge/freezer and a super-spendy double-wide Lacanache-brand range that Your Mama can imagine cost more than the car the Kruger-Jackson's cleaning lady drives.

The main level master suite—not shown in any of the digital listings this property gossip peeped—has a quote-un-quote "secluded" location, poured concrete floors, a wrap around deck, and a newly installed en suite facility. There are two additional guest and family bedrooms, one on the upper level and a much more extensive one that spreads out over just about all of the lower level. The upper level bedroom has a private bathroom while the lower level offers lucky over-nighters a completely self-contained suite of rooms that include a spacious and private, step-down sitting room with French doors and a still decoratively dernier cri and generally quite pricey Ben Ourani rug. There's also a small kitchen, a private bathroom, and a roomy bedroom with at least two more animal hides tossed casually but purposefully on the floor.

The lower lever guest suite opens to a slender covered deck and slim graveled terrace that almost but not quite runs the full width of the house. The remainder of the house has a more sturdy concrete and stucco colonnade. Anyways, a few steps down from the deck, a probably more sun exposed deck is surrounded by thick vegetation and has a tree growing out of the middle.

Because of the (relative) modesty of their individual holdings Miz Kruger and Mister Jackson aren't exactly real estate ballers but they do maintain a reasonably puffy property portfolio. In addition to their Hollywood pied-à-terre they've just put up for sale, the couple also own a semi-remote, 1.34-acre spread in the mountains near Topanga, CA that one or the other of them scooped up in early 2002 for $865,000 and where they fairly recently added a terraces, gardens, and a rectilinear swimming pool. The comely couple undoubtedly keep a (probably rented) residence in Vancouver—Mister Jackson's hometown and where he tapes Fringe—and they most certainly have an apartment near the busy but elegant Quai Voltaire in Paris that some reports suggest is next door to the haute abode of Herr Karl Lagerfeld himself. (Imagine tapping on that door when you're in need of a spot of sugar or a roll of toilet paper?)**P.S. Herr Lagerfeld owns a handful of houses on the same Paris street and, if such matters float your intellectual and/or snobby boats, the severely iconoclastic sartorial maverick's personal library of 60,000+ volumes, children, is all by itself a treasure of immense worth and immeasurable importance.listing photos: Rodeo Realty

Thursday, October 24, 2013

The celebrity real estate scuttlebutt out of New York City today has it that Tinseltown scion Drew Barrymore and her well-bred art consultant husband, Will Kopelman*, might be the wealthy peeps in contract to purchase a house-sized Park Avenue duplex last listed with an asking price of $8.3 million.

An unnamed tipster "with knowledge of the building" told the all-ears kids at Curbed that the child actor turned wild child turned all-grown-up Hollywood power player peeped a couple of pads in the swanky, full-service building before she and hubby decided on said top floor duplex that listing information describes as having undergone a recent renovation that brought it to triple mint condition.

Listing details don't indicate the size of the swanky co-operative apartment but after a few seconds of rudimentary and blunt-edged mathematics based on measurements shown on the floor plan (above) and Your Mama clocks it somewhere around 3,000 square feet. We count four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, three fireplaces, several coat and broom closets, and one nicely private powder room. Just to clarify, that's three real and reasonably generous bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms plus a squeezy staff bedroom and bathroom pinched into an extreme rear of the lower level behind the kitchen.

Although Park Avenue would not be an address of choice for Your Mama and The Doctor Cooter even if we were in the $8+ million dollar market but—and even though the Curbed kids were mostly nonplussed by the place, in addition to the preserved (or recreated) pre-war architectural details such as the fancy moldings and mill work that runs around the lower part of the walls in the double living room space, there are a number of features that really tickle our sometimes too persnickety real estate funny bone...in the good way.

We like how the small entry vestibule makes for a humble spatial counterweight to the expansive grandeur of the double-fireplaced living room/gallery combination space that sweeps more than fifty feet back to front where three sets of transomed French doors stretch almost all the way to the high ceiling and open to an ever-so-slender Juliet balcony 10 floors above the street.

Call us old fashioned—and we've been called so much worse just in the last 24 hours—but Your Mama swoons for a plus-sized dining room that does double duty as a library and, while we might prefer a larger kitchen area with more counter space, we find ourselves unusually drawn to the compact coziness of the adjoining space that manages to incorporate both a four-top dining area and a wee television lounge.

Upstairs two guest/family bedrooms with tiny closets and shared access to a goodly-sized and windowed Jack-'n'-Jill bathroom are well-placed to provide maximum privacy to the master bedroom, a suite of street-facing rooms connected by a central circulation corridor. In addition to the bedroom itself, there's a separate sitting room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls (above, left) and a fitted dressing room. The spacious, all-white master bathroom (above, right) has open-shelf linen storage, a double sink floating vanity with exposed plumbing, a soaking tub, and a separate stall shower.

Since and despite popular opinion we don't know them personally, it seems just about inexplicable to Your Mama that the sellers—photographer Adam Bartos and and his eminently accomplished foreign relations expert wife, Dr. Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos—only purchased the spacious duplex in April of this year (2013) for exactly $8.3 million. Huh. Anyways...

Miz Barrymore and Mister Kopelman reside primarily in Los Angeles in a gated hillside compound above the Outpost Estates neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills that Miz Barrymore has owned since 2002 when she bought it for $4,350,000. The couple also continue to own a vintage, Monterey Colonial estate in the hoity-toity seaside community of Montecito (CA) that they scooped in early 2010 for $5,705,000 and currently have on the market for a (recently reduced) asking price of $6.9 million.*Mister Kopelman's sophisticated father, Arie, is the former CEO and chairman of Chanel—that would have made him Karl Lagerfelds boss!—and his mother, Corinne goes by the name—we are dead serious, chickens—Coco.exterior photo: Kate Leonova for Property Sharklisting photos and floor plan: Sotheby's International Realty

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Some good, old-fashioned peeping and poking around some of the newer listings in some of the more desirable zip codes in Los Angeles turned up a multi-winged single-story abode that sits behind gates (and an ugly chain link fence) just off Mulholland Drive that's listed for $3,450,000 and, as per property records, owned by screenwriter and author Mark Foster.

Mister Foster, in case you don't know but might like to, cut his show business teeth as a writer for The Six Million Dollar Man and Hill Street Blues, the latter of which earned him the first of his three Emmy nominations. It looked that Mister Foster's showbiz ship had come in but good when, in the early-1990s, he teamed up with arty-farty filmmaker David Lynch and co-created the ground-breaking and deliciously dark if very short-lived Twin Peaks television series but, alas. Mister Frost seems to have all but retired from writing for television or movies sometime in the mid-Aughts but not before he wrote screenplays for a couple of the not-particularly-highly-rated but none-the-less money-making Fantasic Four superhero movies.

In the late 1990s Mister Frost began to write—or, at least, publish—(mostly) mystery/thriller novels and a series of (mostly) sports-related non-fiction books including a well-regarded three-book history of golf, the first of which, The Greatest Game Ever Played, was adapted (by Mister Frost) to a 2007 movie of the same name with Shia LaBeouf.

Property records show the half-acre mountain and city lights view property, situated near the craggy border between Beverly Hills Post Office and the valley town of Sherman Oaks, was purchased by Mister Frost and his wife, Lynn, in the summer of 1997 for an unknown amount of entertainment industry bread that, based on mortgage details Your Mama dug up in public records, we'd guesstimate was somewhere between three-quarters of and a million bucks. Anyways...

The rehabbed late-1940s ranch-style residence, described in listing details as "Metropolitan Home Meets Sonoma Style Farmhouse," measures in at a generous but hardly gigantic 3,734 square feet and is currently configured with two bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

Extra-tall wood doors open into a lofty, crystal chandelier-lit foyer that gives way to a boomerang-shaped open-concept main living space decked out with rustic, chestnut-toned wide-plank oak floors, crisp white walls, vaulted ceilings, and windows and sliding doors set off with black frames and mullions. A fireplace anchors the living room end, a built-in buffet defines the dining area, and the spacious center island kitchen is outfitted with soap-stone and butcher block counter tops and top-grade appliances.

Snacks and coffee breaks can be taken at the four-stool breakfast bar that divides the dining area from the kitchen or tucked into the cute and compact semi-circular banquette built into a windowed bay in the kitchen proper. Two swinging doors with porthole windows in the kitchen open into what looks to be a fairly luxurious laundry room with stacked washer/dryer, built-in hanging storage, and a counter top for folding clean clothes.

Other rooms include a roomy, bookcase-lined library/office, a small fitness room, and an also bookcase-lined media room with enough tiered seating on milk chocolate-colored leather recliner-sofas to accommodate (at least) ten boob-toob watchers.

The lone guest/family bedroom has a private bathroom and the much larger master suite includes a bedroom with direct access to the backyard, a big and fitted walk-in closet, and dual bathrooms, his with a frosted glass doored shower stall and hers with a built-in make-up vanity and a mini-fireplace at the business end of a jetted tub in front of a large picture window with tree-top view.

The back of the house opens to an amorphous back yard with concrete patios and an amoebic swimming pool partially surrounded by a thin strip of rolling lawn that gives way to a nicely framed view that, on a clear day, extends all the way to the mountain bordered northern reaches of the San Fernando Valley. Around back there's a chain link fence-enclosed dog run, as per listing details, and somewhere there a putting green. Near the pool a free-standing writer's shack has more deep brown wide-plank wood floors, a vaulted ceiling, and an entire wall of cable-suspended glass book shelves.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in early April (2013), six or seven months after it appeared in the increasingly celebrified pages of Architectural Digest, Your Mama passed along a bit of juicy real estate scuttlebutt we'd heard about how world-famous fashion and celebrity photographer Steven Meisel planned to list his sleek and sexy abode set on a high ridge between the fashionable Bird Streets above the Sunset Strip and the ever-trendy and spendy Trousdale Estates 'hood in Beverly Hills (CA) with an asking price of around $15,000,000.

It wasn't until late May that the property gossip gals at The Wall Street Journal reported the 1963 George MacLean-designed, Marmol + Radziner re-worked, and Brad Dunning-decorated domicile was to be listed for $13 million. Finally, in mid-June, Mister Meisel's single-story sprawler did indeed pop up on the open market with an official asking price of $13 million. We're quite certain every mid-century modern aficionado looking at or actually shopping for a contemporary or, at least, modern-minded home in the $10-15 million price range trekked through the house. Alas, Mister Meisel mini-compound remained un-sold and in mid-September it was removed from the market.

Whilst we whittled away a few days on the sugary sands of the Yucatán last week Mister Meisel's ridge top hideaway magically reappeared with a new, high-profile real estate agent, a slightly reduced asking price of $12,495,000, and a (partially) new crop of well-framed and mostly twilight-timey listing photographs.

Property records indicate Mister Meisel acquired the 1.550 acre property and its zig-zagging mid-century ranch house back in October 2001 for $2,750,000. Current digital marketing materials show the 6,350 square foot house and guest house have a total of three bedrooms and six bathrooms, including that over-sized and now-famous master bathroom that incorporates not only onyx-lined bathing facilities but also clearly defined sitting and office areas for early-morning and late-night multi-tasking.

Lacquered Chinese red double doors make an elegant and glamorously international portal to a discreet-seeming buy high-octane city-view residence did up and done over in a fashion that may not be to every body's personal decorative and/or architectural tastes but is none-the-less an excellent example of an exceptionally sophisticated space for high-style living. Notice, children, the high-gloss marble floors, a period-appropriate mica wall in the dining room, the hand-crafted teak and walnut cabinetry throughout, and the many wide stretches of floor-to-ceiling glass walls and windows that peer into verdant courtyards and out over a fantastical and glimmering swathe of Los Angeles from downtown to—on a clear day, anyways—the the shimmering Pacific.

We're not sure what Mister Meisel's future west coast real estate plans may be but we do know he'll hardly be homeless when his Bev Hills house finds a willing and suitable buyer; Property records show the globally in-demand image maker continues to own at least three adjacent (and probably combined) apartments that total about 4,000 square feet on a higher floor of a fine, full-service pre-war condominium building on lower Park Avenue.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Upon our return home from our short, south-of-the-border vacay Your Mama received a covert communique from real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak who said she's 100% positive that back in early August (2013) Los Angeles Clippers power forward Blake Griffin, through an opaquely-named corporate entity, dropped $9,000,000 on a freshly-completed, Cape Cod-ish/pseudo-Colonial-style center-hall pile in Pacific Palisades, CA.

Well, children, we probably don't have to tell y'all that Your Mama had no idea what a Clipper is, we had—and still haven't—the vaguest notion what a power forward does but do know it sounds naughty, and we swear on both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that we'd never heard the name Blake Griffin before. Thank God (or god or gawd or Whatever) for the interweb because, as it turns out, Mister Griffin is a fast-rising and well-compensated superstar in the world of professional basketball and he plays for an L.A.-based team called the Clippers. Tah-duh!

Our brief and unscientific research revealed that the 24-year old, 6-foot-10-inch—ahem—power forward dropped out of college in 2009 when he was drafted in the first round by the powers that be at the Clippers. Some sort of injury kept him Mister Griffin from dribbling and/or shooting (or whatever) for the entire 2009-10 season but in 2011 he did his basketball thing and earned a spot on the All-Star Team, won the NBA Slam Dunk Contest, and was named NBA Rookie of the Year. He apparently averages just over 20 points a game, which sounds like a lot of damn points to this professional basketball ignoramus. Mister Griffin (reportedly) earned more than $7.2 million for the 2011-12 season and last summer he signed a 5-year extension with the Clippers worth up to $95 million. That means, in case any of ya'll were concerned, that for at least the next five or ten years the young man can well afford a nine million dollar mansion in one of the more affluent communities in Los Angeles.

The acquisition of a 9,000 square foot family-friendly mansion in the casually ritzy Riviera 'hood in Pacific Palisades might seem a somewhat strange buy for a bachelor professional basketballer of just 24 or 25 but—as these things often do—it may (or may not) have something to do with Mister Blake's new baby boy. Mister Blake's new baby momma is former USC lady basketballer Brynn Cameron who, the athletically well-informed probably already know, six years ago made a baby with beau-hunky professional football player Matt Leinart who (in)famously left her before the baby was born. Oh, what a tangled web some weave. Anyhoodles, poodles....

Listing information enticed out of the internets shows the brand spanking new manse sits (quite tightly) on a trapezoidal .34-acre mid-block lot and contains about 9,100 square feet spread over three levels, two above ground and one below. The spacious abode has a total of six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms including a main floor guest suite with en suite marble bathroom as well as a bedroom and bathroom in the finished basement that was probably designed as a live-in staff suite but could else-wise be utilized to bunk less-favored over-night guests.

The house opens into a decadent double-height entry with glammy black glass chandelier and the sort of curved staircase that a melodramatic individual such as Scarlett O'Hara (or Carol Burnett as Scarlett O'Hara) could really may hay. Little besides extra-wide openings separate the entrance hall from the formal living and dining rooms, both with 9.5-inch wide, espresso-stained wood floors and the former with a bookshelf-flanked fireplace and a bank of Fleetwood-style glass doors that slip easily into the walls.

Columns frame the wide-doorway between the dining room and the spacious eat-in kitchen that's outfitted and equipped with custom cabinetry, marble counter tops, a three-sided, six-stool center island snack counter, and the usual suite of high-quality stainless steel appliances. There's a second, bookshelf bracketed fireplace in the adjoining family room that also has an office nook with built-in desk and a wide expanse of glass doors that disappear into the walls and seamlessly join to a deep veranda that overlooks the swimming pool and backyard.

Our possibly incorrect interpretation of online marketing materials suggests that in addition to the staff quarters/ill-favored guest suite the roomy finished basement level encompasses an all but windowless and wet bar-equipped family/game room, what appears to be a windowless home gym, and an also windowless home theater with 130-inch screen set into a wall of built-in cabinetry, tiered seating, and suede wall panels for sound baffling.

The upper level has three guest/family bedrooms with en suite facilities plus a master suite that's complete with fireplace anchored private sitting area, a backyard overlook balcony, and one or maybe two boutique-like fitted walk-in closets. The attached bedroom-sized marble bathroom has radiant-heated herringbone pattern marble tile floors, a soaking tub set into a bay with windows too high to see out of while bathing, and a separate glass-fronted and marble tile-lined steam shower.

A couple of shaded verandas on the main level give way to the outdoor recreational areas that include an LED-equipped salt water swimming pool (and spa) with glass-tiled Baja shelf, a flat grass patch just big enough for a custom jungle gym, and, tucked into the far corner of the yard, a well-equipped outdoor kitchen with four-stool snack and booze bar.

Of course we can't be 100% sure but as far as Your Mama knows, this is the first property purchased in L.A. or anywhere by Mister Griffin.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

A couple of months ago Your Mama told the children that we'd heard from Peter Propertyseller that entertainment industry pooh-bah Leonardo DiCaprio had a serious look-see at media mogul Rupert Murdoch's ridge top estate in Beverly Hills. Now comes word via the New York Post that the three-time Academy Award-nominee—so far always a bridesmaid and never the bride for Mister DiCap at the Oscars—took a tour of a 7,000+ square foot multi-terraced penthouse in New York City's trendy and excessively spendy TriBeCa 'hood that, due to the brand new building's sensational success, recently had its price raised from 35 to $40,000,000.

Mister Kirk and Miz Fischer decamped to a more family-friendly 1920s Mediterranean with five bedrooms and four bathrooms in about 4,600 square feet on a leafy street in Glendale, CA. They purchased the nearly one acre mini-estate, once the home of baseball legend Casey Stengel, for $1.9 million late last year (2012). (listing photos: Rodeo Realty)

In the midst of his (alleged and oft-speculated about) drug-induced melt-down and marital drama, professional basketballer Lamar Odom and his estranged wife Khloe Kardashian (K.K.) shoved their unfurnished 8,557 square foot mock-Med mansion south of South Beach in Pinecrest, FL, up for lease at $17,000 per month, according to the peeps at Realtor.com. As far as Your Mama knows neither Mister Odom nor Miz Kardashian have ever occupied the premises but, then again, what do we know, right?

Mister Odom and K.K. acquired the six bedroom and seven full and two half bathroom suburban mansion on 1.16 acres in the summer of 2009 for about $3 million. Current listing details show the long and squat two-story abode has a double-height entry with frescoed ceiling and sweetheart staircase, a small home theater room, a billiard room with wet bar, a swimming pool and spa, an outdoor kitchen, and a lighted tennis court that does double duty as a basketball court. (listing photos: Esslinger Wooten Maxwell)

Your Mama first read it onTrulia Luxe Living (via The L.A. Times) that pop tartlet turned reality star turned apparel tycooness Jessica Simpson finally sold her celebrity-pedigreed mansion in Beverly Hills, CA, for $6.4 million, much less than the almost eight million she originally wanted but still a profit on the $1.1+ million profit—not counting upkeep cost, improvement expenditures, and real estate fees—on the $5.275 million she paid for the place in late 2005.

The house was formerly owned by Paul Hogan, Tom and Kathy Freston, Ellen DeGeneres, and Rick Yorn. Speaking of property mad chat show hostess Ellen DeGeneres, did y'all see the pictures in The New York Times' T Magazine of her and wife Portia De Rossi's mid-century modern manse in Beverly Hills? Anyhoo...

The new owner's identity is shielded behind a mysterious turst but the always knowledgeable Lucy Spillerguts snitched to Your Mama that the new owner is Sumner Redstone's much younger gal pal Sydney Holland. Miz Simpson and her baby daddy moved to Hidden Hills, CA where they paid $11.5 million for the former home of not-divorcing rock-n-roll royals Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne.(listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty)

As was first revealed by the celebrity scuttlebutters at E! Online, American Idol alum Kelly Clarkson and her brand new husband, talent manager Brandon Blackstock—a.k.a. country queen Reba McEntire's step-son, have settled into a $2.8 million mansion on more than four private lake-front acres in Hendersonville, TN, about 20 miles northeast of downtown Nashville.

Listing details show the 17,000+ square foot mansion of an unknown architectural style has 7 bedrooms, 9.5 bathrooms, a sweetheart staircase and an elevator, ample formal entertaining spaces, and roomy family quarters that include a huge kitchen, a family room and a recreation room plus a home theater, a gym, and, down by the water, a private dock. (listing photos: Worth Properties)

CelebDigs reported that reality t.v. denizen/Showbiz personality Denise Richards moved into one of the three mansions her ex-husband Charlie Sheen owns in the swanky and celebrified Mulholland Estates development in Beverly Hills—or Sherman Oaks depending on your geographic persnickety-ness.

Mister Sheen lives in one of the houses, we're not sure who lives in the one he bought most recently for $4.8 million and—so the story goes–Miz Richards and children have settled into the 9,000 square foot mock-Med macmansion the sassy and erratic actor bought in early 2011 for $6,999,999 from Tinseltown mogul Mike Medavoy and his wife Irina.

That's right, children. Your Mama took a short vacation in a foreign country where the WiFi service was, at best, unexpectedly spotty and mostly non-existent at the otherwise spectacular four-story beach house we rented with our dear old pals Fiona Trambeau, Chow Lee, The Laundress, and a delightful if sometimes vociferous trio of (now extraordinarily tan) Minnesotan niños.

Even though some of y'all harbor the damn fool (and foul-mouthed) notion that this celebrity property gossip does not deserve a few days vacation every now and then—sticks and stone, puppies, sticks and stones—we decided that rather than spend the better part of our day schlepping to an internet cafe to wallow in the murky world of celebrity real estate we'd rather loll on the beach all day with a cooler packed with gin and tonic fixin's. Anyways, we're back in the saddle so let's get our celebrity real estate feet wet with a catch up of some of the real estate doings of rich and famous that went down (or came out) in our absence.

Twilight superstar (and reluctant celebrity) Robert Pattinson officially listed his historic and celebrity pedigreed pad in the Los Feliz are of Los Angeles with a $6.75 million price tag and the ever-industrious kids at Curbed have all the photos of the three bedroom and 3.5 bathroom Spanish Colonial-style residence that Your Mama heard through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine was staged by one of southern California's leading ladies of celebrity home staging. (More photos here, if you please.)

Twihards take note: Your beloved Mister Pattinson moved some time ago—so the scuttlebutt goes—to an unattractive rented mansion in a gated enclave in Beverly Hills so a fanatical drive by his former digs in Los Feliz will likely yield little more than an icy stare from a (probably armed) guard (listing photos: Michael McNamara/Shooting LA for Partners Trust)

The property gossips at the Chicago Tribune revealed that Billy Corgan of the Grammy-winning 1990s alt-rock band The Smashing Pumpkins expanded his lakefront estate in hoity-toity Highland Park (IL)—about 30 minutes north of downtown Chicago—with the $1.25 million purchase of a 4,600+ square foot house on just over an acre that's immediately next door to the 18-room, 9,606 square foot mansion on six-plus acres (above) he purchased back in 2003. The new house was originally built as the coach house to Mister Corgan's mansion.

Our research shows Mister Corgan—who now owns a professional wresting promotions company and a Highland Park tea house—also owns a home tucked deep into a canyon in Beverly Hills (CA) that he picked up in June, 2009, for $3,850,000. (aerial photo: Google)

Celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ let the cat out of the bag about how bubblegum pop boy bander Kevin Jonas and his preggers wife, Danielle, listed their suburban macmansion in Denville, NJ—the one featured on their ongoing reality show Married to Jonas—for $2.2 million.

According to the The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial, back in June (2013) the couple plunked down $825,000for a more privately situated two-plus acre spread just over a mile away in nearby Boonton (NJ) where they (reportedly) plan to build a big new house in which to bring up baby. (listing photos: Terrie O'Connor Realtors via TMZ)

Retired professional basketballer and sports world entrepreneur Michael Jordan has fruitlessly had his 56,000 square foot suburban Chicago (IL) mega-mansion up for sale on the open market since early 2012 when it popped up wit a $29 million asking price, later lowered to $21 million. In addition to the home's 9 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms there's a full-sized indoor basketballs court complete with locker rooms and the whole shebang.

The real estate gossip gals at The Wall Street Journal reported late last week that that the six-foot-six money-minting product endorsement machine and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats basketball team recently decided to put the gated 7.39-acre estate out for auction. There's isn't a minimum bid but it does require a $250,000 deposit just to bid so that should rule out any less financially endowed moe-rons who think it might be cute to make an offer of $48 and an over-sized edible fruit basket. (listing photos: JS Eckart Photography for Concierge Auctions)